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Dentures: An aid or appliance for Activity 2
Great work there. Thanks for letting us know.
What’s the betting ‘except dentures’ gets added at some future point….
Slightly off topic, but - is it safe to assume that if someone can get up from a desk or dining chair, they can get on and off the toilet? Toilets are lower than most chairs. Unless you have a raised toilet seat, which is an aid/appliance.
I’ve read your submission and I think that this is the finest paragraph I’ve ever seen, or ever will see, in an appeal submission:
8. The first reason given by the Tribunal for the refusal to award points under descriptor 2b was that the loss of Chief Brody’s teeth was not caused by a recognised medical condition. I refer to Page F of the Secretary of States response to the appeal. This states that, “The assessment considers impact, not diagnosis. Benefit isn’t paid on the basis of having a particular health condition or impairment but on the impact of the health condition or impairment on the claimant’s everyday life.” I agree that this is an accurate statement of the law, and the correct principle to be applied in this case. It is therefore entirely irrelevant how a person lost a missing body part if they need a prosthetic device to replace it. It makes no difference in law if the claimant lost his teeth through the injudicious application of too many Fizzy Fish, or whether he had gum disease, tumours or ulcers (which itself could be due to poor dental hygiene)? The effect is the same.
Well done.
Cheers
Alex
Thankk you, Alex, very kind.
Well done! I started a thread speculating about this issue back in 2016 https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/9446, but have never had a case hinging on it. I fear ROBBO may be right about them changing the regulations though…
“Reviews Ocado order and removes Percy Pigs and… Fuzzy Fish”!
A bump for this, as I now have another case which has been granted LTA, on roughly the same circumstances: appellant has been awarded six points, we’re asking for 2 more for Activity 2.
The argument has now been advanced that dentures are not needed as an aid or appliance, because the gums harden enough to allow the appellant to take nutrition.
Now, I think this is wrong in law in any case - see Judge Jacobs in [2015] UKUT 0615 (AAC), but it would also mean that all dentures supplied by the NHS are purely for cosmetic purposes?
If you accept this argument, there is also an issue with how long it takes the gums to harden after tooth loss to be able to take nutrition?
Thoughts, people?
[ Edited: 15 Jun 2021 at 11:20 am by Seamus Og ]I am now desperate to know about how much of a dental issue there is in Durham and why this is an area you’re apparently specialising in.
The argument has now been advanced that dentures are not needed as an aid or appliance, because the gums harden enough to allow the appellant to take nutrition.
I don’t know much about dentures as I still have all my teeth (touch wood or perhaps enamel?) and it’s not cropped up with any of my clients so far but it strikes me that if the argument is that you could eat without using them due the gums hardening (putting aside your very good point about how long do we wait for that to happen) then surely there’s still an acceptable standard issue?
If you have no teeth then presumably the only food you could eat would be basically be soup or food that has been reduced to a paste like state? An acceptable standard is that which most people would normally expect to achieve. I don’t know about anyone else but I would expect to be able to achieve more than just eating soup and paste like solids! So in order to achieve an acceptable standard therefore surely dentures would be a reasonable aid and points accrued accordingly?
It does seem like the DWP are keen to avoid having the argument on whether dentures are an aid or not…
Deleted - I had second thoughts!
[ Edited: 16 Jun 2021 at 05:37 pm by Ianb ]Possibly the last word (or maybe not) on this?